A digital cross-connect system (DSX) provides a location for interconnecting two digital transmission paths. DSX is generally located in one or more frames or bays in a central office, e.g., a central telephone office. DSX also provides jack access to the transmission paths.
DSX jacks are known in the art to provide spring contacts for receiving tip and ring plugs. The jacks are commonly ganged in a common housing that is mounted on a frame. The jacks are typically hard wired to wire termination pins or other connection locations that are mounted on a side of the housing opposite plug access openings.
Recent DSX systems include U.S. Pat. No. 4,840,568 (the '568 patent) and U.S. Pat. No. 5,393,249 (the '249 patent), commonly assigned to ADC Telecommunications, Inc., and are incorporated herein by reference. In assembling a DSX system as in the '568 patent, an operator typically uses a wire wrap gun to drive a wire or cable onto a wire wrap pin that extends from a back side of the mount. The opposite end of the wire wrap pin is a spring contact for contacting an electrical contact of a jack circuit board. During assembly, it might be possible for the operator to apply excessive force in driving the wire or cable onto a wire wrap pin/spring contact. The excessive force tends to push the wire wrap pin/spring contact out of a retention position on the mount.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,374,204 (the '204 patent) describes an electrical terminal with a compliant pin section. This patent describes transition sections that resist movement of the pin leg sections toward each other. This movement generates an outwardly directed spring force normal to the planes of the leg sections. In other words, the pin leg sections are designed to have a gap therebetween and the transition sections are designed to keep the gap between the pin leg sections thus creating a spring force. This type of a compliant pin has disadvantages. One such disadvantage is that the creation of a spring force as described can weaken the spring force exerted at an opposite end of the compliant pin.
Therefore, improvements are desired.